What did Edward Snowden get wrong? Everything

[Recursion]

51. I don't have an expectation of privacy in information I give to a third party in the course of

communicating with you.

When I connect a phone call, I tell Verizon (or whomever) "I wish to connect to this phone number". That information was willingly given to a third party (Verizon) and I don't have any Constitutional expectation of privacy in it (see Smith v. Maryland). At various times I have had some statutory expectation of privacy, but that's been pretty steadily eroded since it was first enacted in 1986.

So I can just walk into a business and demand all of their records to go through when and if I feel like it?

No, but you're also not the Government. And the important legal issue here is that the data of whom you called doesn't belong to you; it belongs to Verizon.

This is exactly what these NSA programs are doing without specific warrants based on just cause.

Well, I'm not sure what the doctrine of "just cause" is, but IIRC the NSA's requirement is preponderance of the evidence. And even that has limited it to 300 uses in the past 5 years.